The invention is related to the fields of fluid handling and filtration. Suitable uses include absorbent personal care products. More particularly, it concerns a fabric having creases which results in good resilience and resistance to compression, versus comparable materials having an un-creased structure.
Personal care products, as well as filtration products, must have the ability to control the movement of fluid to some degree. Such control is often accomplished by manipulating the pore size, density, fiber denier, bonding area or other physical characteristics of the components of the product. Chemical means for controlling the characteristics are also used and include surfactants, applied both internally and externally.
Personal care products usually have a surge layer interposed between and in intimate, liquid communicating contact with a top sheet and another layer such as a distribution or retention layer. The surge layer is usually adjacent the inner (away from a wearer) surface of the top sheet, which is the outermost surface of the product that contacts the wearer. It is usually desirable to attach the upper and/or lower surfaces of the surge layer to the top sheet and next layer to further enhance liquid transfer.
Previous surge layers have included single and multi-layer structures having varying densities, deniers and the like. Examples of such previous surge materials may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,879,343 and 5,820,973 to Dodge et al. Though such surge materials have generally been successful, a more resilient or compression resistant surge material is still desired for better fluid handling capability under a load. A surge material that could better control the direction of fluid movement would also be desired.
There remains a need, therefore, for a surge material for personal care products and for filtration that is capable of retaining its integrity during pressure loads while also being able to better control the direction of fluid movement. It is an object of this invention to provide such a novel structure.
The objects of the invention are achieved by a surge layer for personal care products with a first creased layer and at least a second layer. The layers are in face-to-face relation to one another and bonded together. The first layer should have a basis weight between 5 and 70 gsm and the second layer may have densities of between 0.01 and 0.05 g/cc and a basis weight between 25 and 250 gsm.